


Setsuna That Was and Saji That Will Be

by second-wings (eigwayne)



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Complicated Relationships, ELS!Setsuna, Eye Horror, F/M, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Gore, Past Lives, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Setsuna/Marina, both platonic and romantic Setsuna/Saji, implied Graham/Saji but not really, there's six lifetimes in this so everything is complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 23:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10581405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eigwayne/pseuds/second-wings
Summary: Post-Trailblazer. Sort of a soul mates AU but not really? Rating is for gore/violence and angsty themes. Anyways:There were two constants in Setsuna's existence, as his soul unraveled before him (integrating with a race that shared a consciousness would do that). One, that Marina Ismail would bring him love and comfort. And two, that Saji Crossroad would bring him love and comfort- and pain.Or, Five Times Setsuna Watched Saji Crossroad Die, and One Time He Didn't.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Gundam 00 Week 2017, Day 5- Five Times. 
> 
> It's a little late for G00 Week, oops. I realized about halfway through that this story was too ambitious for a project with a deadline when I was working full time all week (I have a lengthy commute that kind of puts a damper on ambitious plans. Plus I'm not going to lie, I was doing a timed event in Tales of Link, too, so I was spread a little thin at the beginning of the week). And then I struggled with one of the later scenes. It's been a disaster. But it's done.
> 
> Chapter 2 is some world-building notes and a bonus scene. The main fic is chapter 1.

When Setsuna looked back on it, integrating his body with beings that had no sense of ‘self’ had been a very odd experience. 

This, of course, was a vast understatement.

It had taken literal years, Earth-time, to safely merge his mind and body with the ELS (who had no name for themselves, having no need for names at all, so Setsuna simply continued to call them ELS). One of the more interesting, more devastating, side effects of this change was that Setsuna had stripped his entire being bare, and now knew without a doubt that humans had souls.

This was a bad thing, at first. He had not feared death when he went after the ELS, so suddenly knowing that he could be born again into a human body brought him no comfort. Instead, he remembered living and dying, four times.

Marina Ismail… She was one of two that his soul had touched in each life. She had been his mother, his sister, his dearest friend, and one time, his son. Her presence was what started giving him comfort as he and the ELS, and Tieria who was still with him in the QAN-T’s systems, made sense of the whirling memories embedding in his soul. Marina was a constant.

The other comfort, and the greatest pain, came from Saji Crossroad.

*~*~*~*~*

Two weeks was not a long time, but in the salt mines time didn’t really matter. There was only work, darkness, and pain. So when the foreman brought him back up to the light, Frodi rejoiced even as he wondered if he was to be put to death. People usually weren’t executed for a loaf of bread, but these weren’t normal times. 

(Were there any ‘normal’ times? Setsuna-that-would-be wondered as the memory emerged from the forgotten center of his being. It seemed like life was just a string of abnormalities.)  
Frodi, Setsuna-that-was, found himself before the mayor and his son, both looking down on him from the backs of their horses. Ponies, really, for horses weren’t very big yet. The son had round, guileless eyes of gray-green-brown that Frodi didn't know how to describe, and wore a green cloak with an ornate gold pin like a leaping ram. 

“The baker has asked for clemency,” the mayor said, the same hard tone he had used to sentence Frodi to the mines. Frodi glanced over at said baker, and she nodded. She’d been wringing her hands, but she was admirably holding still now.

The doe-eyed son spoke then, and Frodi had never heard anything so sweet. “You’re being released. But as a condition of that release, you’re to serve under her for one year. Every man should learn a trade, after all.”  
So Frodi went from part-time thief to full-time baker’s boy, and the baker, who would be Feldt Grace someday, treated him kindly and saw that he was fed. The mayor’s son, Thiodric, often came to buy loaves, and taught Frodi to keep accounts using scraps of cloth and an ink made of ground earth, umber, that was the same color as Thiodric's eyes.

Thiodric had a trade, himself. He was a warrior, and a mediocre one. He hated it. But it was his father’s will, and if he was to become a leader, he had to prove himself in battle. Frodi began learning the spear from him in their free time and soon surpassed him. It made Thiodric laugh, and when Frodi’s service to the baker was over, he made him his man-at-arms.

“I’ve naught to fear with you by my side,” he said some years later, ruffling Frodi’s hair even though Frodi was taller now. Thiodric had fed him well, like the baker they still visited had, and he had grown tall and strong. “If we can win some peace, maybe I’ll learn the harp instead.”

But peace wasn’t won, and Thiodric was a mediocre warrior. 

Eventually, the town was attacked, a battle of conquest for the valuable salt mine and the riches it brought in trade. Frodi’s shield had split under the burden of guarding them both. 

He awoke as the townsfolk were floating among the carnage like wraiths, looking for friends, looting the enemy dead. His body hurt everywhere, and his face was badly swollen and he could barely see, but he recognized Thiodric’s pin on the half-missing form beside him, the leaping ram filthy with gore. When he found the head, a raven had already taken one of Thiodric’s eyes, and Frodi screamed and flailed to scare it away before it ate the other.

He cradled Thiodric in his arms and wept, and later, when the mayor asked who would guard him in death, Frodi begged for a second chance. He had loved no one so well as Thiodric, not since his mother had died (“Marina Ismail,” Setsuna thought, for he had recognized her familiar sweet sadness in Frodi’s earliest memories). 

And so Frodi, Setsuna-that-was, Setsuna of the spear, stood with complete calm as the priests performed their rituals. The air was thick with smoke and herbs. It almost hid the smell of death that clung to Thiodric’s mangled body. 

The priest’s knife was sharp, and Frodi barely felt the sting when they cut his throat. With this, he would guard Thiodric forever.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Explaining Frodi’s serenity in the face of death was difficult. Tieria had seen the memories, since Setsuna was indelibly linked with the QAN-T and the QAN-T was linked with Veda. For Tieria, Death was an enemy who had taken many friends, for all that Tieria had gotten careless with his own bodies. Setsuna liked to believe he got the point across, though. Frodi was another of himself, after all, and he /knew/. He’d believed with all his heart that he would join Thiodric in the afterlife, and guard him well. He would atone for letting Thiodric, Saji-that-was, die.

That was why Thiodric’s death had been so much more painful than his own.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He went to visit Marina Ismail first, when he returned to Earth. Even if he hadn’t had the surreal experience of peeling away the layers of his soul, he missed her. She had wanted to protect him from himself, and that meant something.

He almost offered to assimilate her with the ELS, so they could be near each other forever and she too could feel the echoes of her past. But she was peaceful, accepting. There was no need in her heart to deny that her time would end.

That was why she never Changed. She had seen the world become peaceful, and she was content. She had accepted things as they were now. Even him. Even his past, such as she knew.

They walked together in the field of flowers outside her home, and she watched him board the QAN-T and leave. The wind of his take-off pulled her hair from her bun and Setsuna fancied that he was looking down at her younger self, the silken raven tresses he remembered caught in a wind of petals.

He was content, as Frodi had been, that this would not be the last time they met.

*~*~*~*~*~*

She was his sister, and they huddled together under a thick wool blanket and whispered. Of love, of family, of adventures they might never have but still dreamt of. And when the handsome merchant insulted him, they whispered of that too.

“He’s a pig,” Setsuna-that-was insisted.

“You’re overreacting,” Marina-that-was said.

She was right, but Setsuna in this life was a willful girl, and every foreigner that stepped foot on Mona was an insult to the people of Gwynnedd. Even if this one brought fine Irish goldwork and salted beef and told stories of Artur Pendragon whenever he returned from the east. He was an Irishman, with a foolish smile and eyes the color of a particularly boring alder. Not even the leaves. The bark.

It was the stories that eventually won over Nyfain, Setsuna-that-was, Setsuna of Mona. She spoke to the Irish merchant more pleasantly the next summer, and bought ribbons for her sister.

Three years later, Nyfain walked through the market with her new nephew in her arms, for her sister Angharad, Marina-that-was, had married the blacksmith (who would be Shirin Bakhtiar in two thousand years), and things like babies sometimes happened when one married. The Irish merchant Domnall mac Éogan was stricken when he saw her holding a babe, and it was then that she realized all his talk of settling in Gwynnedd recently was because he loved her. And she eventually came to forgive him for not being born Welsh, and even loved him back.

They married the next summer.

(The ELS were fascinated by this life as Setsuna remembered it, marveling at such human things as sexual dimorphism and babies and the rituals of courtship. And Setsuna found himself with the unenviable task of explaining copulation to a single-consciousnessed alien race that didn’t reproduce.)

But Saji-that-was was still Saji, and Domnall was as mediocre a warrior as Thiodric had been. When the Mercians came west, he swore to protect the town and Nyfain. 

She was shooting arrows at the easterners from a second story window during the attack, being a willful woman and insisting on staying to help with the defense. She saw it when Domnall took a sword to the middle. 

She was not protected at all.

But she lived on, as women did when they married warriors, regardless of skill, and she watched their son grow. Her sister Angharad continued to be her confidant and support, and her son Owein sold fine Welsh wool when Artur’s peace was at its height. And Nyfain, Setsuna of Mona, went to bed one night, grey-haired and arthritic, dreamed of Domnall mac Éogan as she hadn’t in years, and never woke.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Setsuna liked to think Owein ap Domnall’s small brood of children survived the ages, and that somewhere in the world there were still children of his and Saji’s. Maybe Lockon Stratos was one of them.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The ELS were disturbed at first by the tendency of humans to up and die. Setsuna got a glimpse of the poor souls they’d tried to contact before him. They hadn’t usually survived it, and the pain and fury of Shaman Descartes in particular had driven them to attack in their fear of it.

“You need a gentler touch,” Setsuna told them. The analogies of petting kittens didn’t work since they didn’t have hands, but his embrace with Marina had helped. He was strong enough now that a careless touch would hurt her, but he had held her gently as they embraced and the ELS could comprehend that. They also spent far too long on Setsuna of Mona’s memories of Domnall. It was a strange but not unpleasant sensation, to recall such intimacies involving parts he did not possess himself. But he wished the ELS would let those memories go for a bit instead of mentally chewing on them in an effort to understand. At least, he hoped it was an effort to understand.

He resisted the urge to chastise them for being perverse, and flew the QAN-T eastward.

*~*~*~*~*~*

His third life with Saji and Marina was hot and dry with periods of rain and plenty- a stark contrast to the near-constant rainy days he remembered of Wales. But there were lakes that provided water in all but the worst of times, and it was here that Kayembe led a small tribe as their kilolo. 

It was also here that the crocodile took his arm, and almost got his whole left side.

Setsuna remembered blood and pain and later fever. The fever made his comrades’ divinations seem like curses, and every time he woke, his heart pounded in his chest until he thought it might break through his ribs. When he finally woke without the searing heat swelling his skull, he could not see out of his left eye, and he threw curses at his caretaker- Musau, Saji-that-was, the woman from the east. She had come to the village recently, escaping a conflict in her homeland, and she knew some healing.

“It’s a bandage!” she said, and removed it. His sight restored, he relaxed.

Vision was important to him, for in this time, Setsuna was the warrior, a good one that protected the whole tribe until the crocodile took his arm from the elbow down.

He would heal under Musau's care, and learn to hunt again with one arm under Tshamala, who was his most trusted warrior (he would be Graham Aker someday, and Setsuna did not know how to feel about that. This confused the ELS greatly). Musau’s place in the community was assured, and he was proud to call her his friend. Her light brown eyes, almost grayish, would light up when she saw him.

They loved each other greatly, even though she married Tshamala. It was enough that they were by each other’s side. Kayembe celebrated the union of his two greatest friends with rich gifts, one of them a tiger's eye stone the same color as Musau's.

When she grew heavy with child, Kayembe rejoiced as if it were his own, and swore that he would teach the babe to lead the tribe.

Musau would not live to see it. Childbearing was hard and it was a dry year. There was little water and no herbs to ease her pain, and although the mediums prayed to the ancestors and cast divinations, they could only see the future for her son.

Kayembe held Musau to comfort her, and adopted her child, Marina-that-was, who would face the growing empire to the east and find a place for their tribe without the loss of a single life. The one-armed warrior-chief would watch it all on Musau’s behalf, and vowed to greet her with his head held high when his own life ended. 

But at the time, he bowed his head and wept.

*~*~*~*~*~*

The ELS were thankfully less bewildered by these memories. They were learning. Kayembe, Setsuna of the lakes, had showed them a determination that they saw in Setsuna of now, and the kind of love that didn’t need to focus on physical communion, and the will to carry on. Somehow it was easier to bear than Frodi, but Setsuna could still feel a ripple through their consciousness as Kayembe wept over Musau’s still form.

They had learned, and they knew enough to sorrow with him. Setsuna thought that was just as heart-breaking as the chieftain’s tears.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Saji Crossroad has been hapless in every life, hasn’t he?” Tieria said once, when Setsuna discovered just how often he outlived his neighbor-turned-copilot.

“Perhaps he’s just too kind for the world as it was,” Setsuna said. He was completely integrated with the ELS by then, soul laid bare, but his newly silver skin fascinated him. He turned his hand and watched the play of light on it as they spoke. “Isn’t that why we fought? To make a better, peaceful world for people like him?” Tieria’s tiny hologram had been quiet and thoughtful at that.

Setsuna recalled that conversation again as the QAN-T flew toward the HRL hospital where his friend was admitted. ‘Will I have to outlive everyone?’ he thought.

He realized he might, and the thought that he would meet them again was a comfort where it was once a burden. He thanked Marina for that, her serenity still fresh in his mind, and landed the QAN-T.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Comfort for Charley, Setsuna-that-was, Setsuna the poet, was no nebulous concept like serenity or reincarnation. For Charley was in love, and his comfort was Jae.

They were singers, dancers, two members of a pop group that toured Asia. Jae was the youngest when the unit formed, and even though they added a younger member later on, everyone still called Jae the baby. He laughed and shrugged it off, except when Charley did it. Charley was his lover, and he complained that it was creepy to be called ‘baby’ in bed.

Charley tactfully never mentioned there were people who did that on purpose (Setsuna was confused when this memory surfaced. It seemed that in the depths of his soul, he was far more knowledgeable than he had been in his current life).

The group leader, who would be Lasse Aeon someday, said that he didn’t care what they did behind closed doors. “Just maintain the illusion,” he said, “and don’t do anything weird in the kitchen.”

‘Maintain the illusion’ was his code for keeping their image intact- clean cut boys who focused on their careers and did their military service without complaint. They certainly didn’t pop buttons off shirts trying to get at a lover’s skin, and Jae’s mismatched buttons were a fashion choice, not necessity.

“Be gentle,” he would say, and Charley would try. Sometimes it even worked, and their passion was languid and deep.

(Setsuna had more sex in this lifetime than all the others combined. Tieria was appalled, the ELS far too curious. But Setsuna-that-was didn’t care about Setsuna-that-would-be’s modesty. He was in love and he showed it with his body and his writing. After Jae’s death, he would publish a thick volume of love poetry, all penned out of his affection for his bandmate.)

By now, Setsuna-that-would-be had figured out that Charley would see Jae die. He had recognized Saji Crossroad’s umber-brown eyes and slightly foolish smile every time Charley whispered sweetly to his lover. He was cautiously optimistic when Jae returned safely from his mandatory military service, admitting that he was a mediocre warrior at best and was glad to be home in Charley's arms.

It happened on tour. Jae took a car to visit an aunt who lived nearby and the rest of the band went on ahead. They were at the rest stop where Jae would meet them, and Charley was on the phone with Jae.

“I’m almost there,” Jae said happily. “I can see the sign up ahead.”

Charley went to the front window of the restaurant, hoping to see the off-ramp. “What color’s your rental?”

“Grey. The boring kind like your mother drives.” They both laughed, but then there was a thud and a muffled sound. Jae called his name and it sounded far away.

“I dropped the phone,” he said, his voice that sort of shout-talk people got when a phone receiver was far away. “But I’m at the exit.”

“Okay. I’ll see you.”

“Two minutes, tops. I love y-“

The sight and sound would haunt Setsuna for the rest of that lifetime. A little silver car, slightly over the line at the mouth of the off-ramp. A truck clipping it’s side. The screeching tires and terrible smashing sound reached even inside the restaurant building.

By the time Charley reached him, Jae was gone, and later, people would try to console him with the fact that “at least it was quick.” But that was no solace when the media blamed Jae for his own death, and the band broke up, and the only reason Charley lived long enough to write enough poetry for a full volume was his childhood friend, Marina-of-that-time, who kept him going with soup and the sheer force of her will.

Charley apologized for making her take care of him, but even an angel’s nursing couldn’t save someone who’d watched his heart die.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Louise looked like Charley had felt, and Setsuna’s heart seemed to stop beating. Was Saji gone already? 

But her eyes grew wide when she saw him, suspicious at first of his silvery form, and once she recovered from the shock, she yelled at him for staying away so long.

“I thought we were your friends!”

It made him feel better. If Louise was this fiery, Saji had to be with her still.

After his scolding, there in the hallway of the hospital, Louise told him to visit Saji and keep an eye on him while she got something to eat. Setsuna nodded and watched her go.

She’d been beautiful, her hair golden and her face barely lined. Her eyes were still blue, but there was a flicker of gold when she was thinking, like she was connecting on a quantum level. Louise had Changed.

But Saji had not Changed. Setsuna found his room, and while Louise had appeared to be in her thirties still, Saji showed every one of his 74 years. He was pale and wan, hooked up to a respirator and too weak to do more than raise his hand and reach for Setsuna when he realized who had come to see him.

Setsuna went to his bedside and took his hand. He was frailer than Marina and Setsuna had to be very careful. The ELS’s consciousness was active but strangely incoherent.

“You came,” Saji said, his voice thin.

Setsuna almost wished he hadn’t, but nodded. “I was away.”

“Feldt told me. She wrote, for a while. Said I deserved to know.” His breath hitched. “She’s like Louise. Still young. You should see her.”

“I will,” Setsuna promised. He wondered if Feldt still loved him.

Saji was quiet for a moment, looking blankly up at his ceiling. “It’s my lungs,” he said, not looking at Setsuna. “If I can hold out, there’ll be a replacement.”

“You’re stronger than you think, Saji Crossroad.” 

Saji looked over at him, eyebrows raised. “First one failed. I don’t know if a second would do any good. Sometimes I can’t even tell if I’m breathing. Rest of the time it just hurts.”

Setsuna’s heart was a lump in his chest and he felt vaguely like he was holding the cold body of Saji-that-was, even though Saji was talking to him. 

“But I’m glad you came. I was scared before, but I think it will be okay.”

And there was the foolish smile, the one Frodi and Nyfain and Charley and even Kayembe, who didn’t think Musau was foolish at all, had found so sweet. And Setsuna knew why watching all the Sajis-that-were leave him was so hard. Like Louise said, they were friends, and Setsuna loved him. Not just his past, but himself, now, loved Saji as much as he loved Marina.

‘I could assimiliate him,’ he thought, ‘and he wouldn’t be in pain anymore. I wouldn’t have to lose him again.’

There was a ripple through the ELS. They couldn’t talk to this person. Their touch would kill him.

For a long moment, Setsuna thought about trying anyway.

Saji coughed, a small, dry sound. “You’re always so quiet,” he said, and his voice was worse than before. “Someday, I want to talk to you.”

“You will,” Setsuna said with certainty. He almost told Saji about their lives, about Saji with the gold pin and Setsuna of the spear, and all the others. But Saji coughed again, and it was rough and wet, spattering his lips with blood, and one of his monitors went off.

A nurse pushed by him within seconds and Setsuna was shunted into a corner, the strange silver man ignored for their patient.

Louise screamed Saji’s name when she got back to the room, and Setsuna had to hold her back. She slammed her fist against his chest to make him let go. He grabbed her wrists, struggling to hold her tight enough to stay out of the doctors’ way but gentle enough not to crush her bones. He was still holding her when they turned the monitors off and pulled a sheet over Saji’s face.

His body felt heavy and useless and he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t crying. Was it because Louise was weeping against his chest and he had to hold her up instead of hold her back? Or could he not cry anymore? Louise punched him again and again as she chanted, “why, why, why” as if she might find an answer if she could only get through his ribs.

“He didn’t Change,” Setsuna said dully, trying to find the answer for her.

Louise looked up at him, her eyes hard. “He didn’t have to,” she spat. “He was already perfect.”

Setsuna thought of Saji- not even Thiodric or Domnall or Musau or Jae. Just Saji and his devotion and that dumb smile and infuriating doormat personality that somehow turned to steel. The giving nature that had him bringing over meals for a near-stranger next door. The sense of duty when it came to his work. The deceptive strength of his arms.

“He was,” Setsuna murmured, and held Louise as close as he dared, while she cried for the both of them.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Tieria happened across the name by accident. He was still intimately involved with Veda and the space exploration programs, and was taken by surprise while reading a personnel log.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this,” he said to Setsuna, and Setsuna could only agree. 

Saji Crossroad.

He couldn’t be him, Setsuna thought. The ELS wondered why, after all he’d seen when his soul was opened up. “Because the name is never the same. The name, the looks, everything is different.”

Except-

While Marina and Feldt and the others had always belonged in their time, with different hair and skin and eyes, and the only thing that was the same was the resonance of their inner being, Saji-that-was always had the same round, brown eyes and open smile.

And so Setsuna went to space, to see Saji Crossroad for himself.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He was working on one of the new explorations vessels, a junior engineer who was helping with construction of a prototype to replace the aging Sumaragi-class ships. They were building it at the ELS station. Setsuna stopped the QAN-T near the giant desert flower blooming in space, and went to find the engineer with the too-familiar name.

His hair was dark brown and tousled, and he seemed busy and flustered, overworked. But the lines of his body were similar, and the angles of his face hinting at Setsuna’s friend. Setsuna would eventually find out that this was because he was a great-to-some-degree nephew of Saji’s, descended from a second cousin on his father’s side.

When Setsuna finally talked to him face to face, the slightly foolish smile of Saji Crossroad and all the Sajis-that-were was on his lips.

He was an Innovator, and Setsuna felt the familiar resonance even though his eyes were glittering golden instead of Saji’s brown.

This was his Saji, and this time he had Changed.

“Saji’s a family name,” he explained when Setsuna asked. “Somewhere along the line, we got a little uncreative,” Crossroad said. “I have a cousin named Saji and two uncles named Koji.”

Setsuna gave a small laugh and Crossroad smiled again. It made Setsuna’s heart ache to see the resemblance to Saji-that-was.

He was never lonely, not with the ELS, but he and Crossroad became friends and he somehow felt better than he had in several decades. He hadn’t had a physical, human friend since the last of his old companions had passed on and he started waiting, searching for whoever would be reborn next. Tieria was still around, but it wasn’t the same. And even though he knew he would have to say good-bye again someday, being near Crossroad brought him comfort.

There were awkward moments, as there would when one knew so much more about their friend’s soul than they themselves did. A reference to things Saji wouldn’t know because they were something he’d shared with Saji-that-was. An overreaction when Setsuna met Saji’s boyfriend and it turned out to be Graham Aker again. Things of that nature.

(In Setsuna’s defense, he found about the boyfriend when he caught them kissing in a secluded hallway. There was no way that wasn’t going to be awkward, especially when his first thought on the matter was, ‘We would be lovers again in this life, if I were completely human.’ Setsuna was unable to hide his jealousy that Saji was spending so much time with someone else. He hid his relief at their break-up much better.)

“Come outside with me,” Saji said one day. “I have to do some work, replace an armor plate. It should be a straightforward job, but I’d like the company.”

He wouldn’t be alone; no one was allowed on space walks completely alone and there’d be crew supporting him. But Setsuna said yes, and the two went out into the vastness of space.

Setsuna loved that Saji still stopped to look at universe around him. He’d done it for the entire time Setsuna had known him in this body, and he remembered Saji-that-was often commenting on the beauty of the world around them. 

Saji paused to regard the blue sphere of the Earth and what he could see of the ELS blossom, and Setsuna saw that familiar smile on his lips. It was only then that he got to work.

They were almost done with the repair. Something happened, electricity still flowed through the panel Saji had removed.

The explosion wasn’t large, not compared to what Setsuna had seen before, but it threw Saji away from the ship.

Setsuna’s scream was lost in the vacuum of space.

‘I can’t lose him again,’ ran through his mind, and it seemed that his heart stopped, his stomach twisted, and his breath caught. 

He leapt forward and grabbed Saji’s arm. The force of his action spun them around and Setsuna wrapped his arms around Saji. 

Saji’s face was pained. Sestuna could feel scraps from the panel under his hands.

‘If his suit is punctured-‘ There was one scrap that felt wet under his hands. Saji would die if he didn’t do something.

‘A space suit wouldn’t matter if he was integrated.’ But it had taken years to integrate completely. He had minutes, seconds.

The ELS’ consciousness told him how to do it. But was Saji’s mind strong enough, open enough to accept them?

Setsuna pressed his forehead against the visor of Saji’s helmet. “Saji, look at me.” It echoed more in his mind than aloud, but it worked. Saji raised his flickering golden eyes.

“Setsuna… I’m scared.”

Saji had been scared before. And Setsuna- he remembered seeing the fear in Saji’s eyes, before the battle that took Thiodric’s life, when they learned the Mercians would attack Domnall and Nyfain’s home, when Musau realized she would never see her son, and reflected in Jae’s dead eyes. When Saji Crossroad, the first one, Saji the gentle, tried to stay brave even though his body was failing around him. 

Marina may have approached her time with serenity, but Saji had wanted to live. Setsuna couldn’t bear to see that fear in his eyes again. He couldn’t bear to let him go one more time.

“I can help,” he said. “But there’s a chance… You have to focus on me, and let your mind open up, or this will kill you.”

Saji smiled weakly. “My blood’s going to start boiling any second now. I’ll take my chances.”

The ELS’s consciousness seemed to ripple around Setsuna as he let the living metal in his hands start combining with Saji. “Look at me,” Setsuna said again. The ELS were eager to touch another human mind, and Setsuna had to hold them back even as his tried to deepen his connection with Saji.

“It hurts,” Saji said, tears filling his eyes. 

“I know. Be brave.” He held Saji tighter.

“You were always the brave one,” Saji said. But Setsuna didn’t have time to wonder about that comment. He reached out with his consciousness like he was communicating with the ELS, touching Saji’s mind, and let the silvery liquid metal that made up his body flow into Saji.

Saji’s mouth opened in a scream and tears streamed down his face. Setsuna called his name.

He’d watched Saji Crossroad die five times already. His lord, his husband, his friend, his lover, his copilot. He couldn’t do it again. His heart lurched at the thought. The ELS’s consciousness writhed in response to his distress.

He held Saji and murmured directly into his mind until Saji’s form was as silver as his own. He could feel Saji’s hands go around him, still shaking from the change and unaware of his new strength so he gripped too tight. It felt heavenly.

Saji tucked his head against Setsuna’s neck, wetting his skin with tears. Setsuna’s eyes burned, and for the first time since he’d Changed, he cried.

He had seen Saji die for the last time. Now, they could live.


	2. Notes and Bonus Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Notes and a sappy bonus scene for an already lengthy reincarnation fic.

Thank you for reading the fic in the previous chapter! Below are some nerdy-ass background notes, and a special scene consisting of nothing but fluff. If you're not here for the world-building crap (I love it, sorry), skim down until you hit a "------" scene break.

Past Lives:  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
Frodi and Thiodric: Iron Age Germany, about 4000-3000 years ago.  
Setsuna of the spear and Saji with the gold pin.

They are a continental Celtic people and are of a culture that buries their dead in tumuli with rich grave goods. There was going to be a scene where Setsuna locates a picture of Thiodric's pin in an online museum exhibit, but it made the story even lengthier and added nothing except a rather melancholy bit that implied their grave was disturbed. So it was cut.

"The mayor’s son, Thiodric, often came to buy loaves, and taught Frodi to keep accounts using scraps of cloth and an ink made of ground earth, umber, that was the same color as Thiodric's eyes." I took some liberties with the keeping of accounts and the raw umber ink. Saji's eyes are an unusually plain color for an anime character and getting in repeated descriptions was difficult.

Their names are based on theorized Proto-Germanic forms of Frōda (Old English, which should have been Frodo but the name is too famous as a Hobbit to use seriously for other things) and Thiodarīk (theoretical Old Saxon form that would eventually be Derek. I should have used a thorn instead of a "th" to spell it, but I didn't want to get too fancy and make the fic inaccessible for the average 00 reader). Thiodric is only a few years older than Frodi; it seems like more because he is in a position of power. At the time of their last battle, Frodi was 20 and Thiodric was 22-23.

I never decided if Frodi and Thiodric were platonic comrades or romantically involved, but they loved each other dearly either way. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Nyfain and Domnall: Sub-Roman Britain, early 400s.  
Setsuna of Mona and Saji the Irish merchant.

The allusions to King Arthur (Artur) are entirely on purpose. My favorite "King Arthur was real" theories are all Post-Roman Welsh versions. 

Nyfain and Domnall were happily married except for a few spirited arguments, with a fairly active bedroom life. It was akward for Setsuna to experience.

Nyfain, Angharad, and Owein are old Welsh names appearing in geneologies from around this time period. Domnall and Éogan can be traced back to early medieval Ireland. Domnall is Domnall mac Éogan, which from my research was the correct form for Irish "son of" type names at the time, but Owein is "ap Domnall" instead because he considers himself Welsh and not Irish.

Nyfain was 15 when they met and 20 when they married. Angharad was the elder sister by at least a full year. Domnall was six years older than Nyfain, and 28 when he died. From what we understand of that time, the age difference wouldn't have been that strange. Nyfain lived to her fifties or sixties, and saw some of her grandchildren grow to adulthood. A long, full life for the time.

There was going to be a bit where Nyfain remarried the Graham-of-that-time, but that was primarily for "Graham loves Gundam" lulz and was outside the scope of the story.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Kayembe and Musau: Pre-Luba Empire Congo, 1200-1300s.  
Setsuna of the lakes and Saji from the east.

The Luba Empire was my inspiration for this one. It was actually quite advanced, but there was simply not enough time to get into it so I moved the time period of the story earlier a bit. Their culture is inspired by the Luba, though, extrapolating on existing information, and their tribe lives in wattle homes built along a single main street, near a lake/river system. 

The names are modern Baluba since I couldn't find resources on names going back that far, at least not with a time constraint. 

I never decided on ages, but Musau is in her late twenties. Kayembe and Tshamala are about the same age, experienced hunter/warriors but still in their prime.

I chose Graham for Tshamala's soul to reference another canon character that Setsuna would recognize. He was chosen for his relationship with Setsuna rather than Saji.

Kayembe never married and was most likely asexual. Musau's love for him was platonic but very encompassing. Tshamala was probably very patient or very understanding. Many men would be intimidated by their wife being so in love with someone else even if it was platonic. But then, Graham Aker is not 'many men'.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Charley and Jae: Modern South Korea, 2050-2070 or so.  
Setsuna the poet and Saji the dancer.

The self-indulgent K-pop smut AU! Except I didn't write smut. Please forgive me (be it for the self-indulgence, the implied smut, or the lack of smut). 

Charley's full name is Lee Chang-Min, and he uses an English name as his stage name because he doesn't want to get mixed up with the other Chang-Mins in show business at the time. I picked a more common name on purpose. Jae's full name is Jo Jae-Eun. He's sort of named after a singer an old internet friend introduced me to, Ahn Jae-Mo. 

Military service is mandatory in South Korea, and with many leaders and politicians doing their damndest to turn the Earth into a war zone now, in 2017, I can't imagine that will change any time soon.

Charley and Jae were in a pop band so if you're into kpop boy bands, please feel free to be inspired by your personal favorite. The group formed when Jae was 16 and Charley was 18. Lasse-that-was was 19 at the time. The accident happened around 8 years later.

After his death, Jae became a cautionary tale against distracted driving. Charley stopped wanting to live, and Marina-that-was tried to help. But Charley eventually got sick from neglecting his body and was hospitalized. He only survived Jae by a few years.

There was a book of Charley's poetry published in Korean that I almost added a full scene about. It was love poetry, some of it sensual bordering on erotic, and people speculated about who it was written for. Marina and Lasse never told. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Setsuna and Saji: Canon, the 24th century.  
Setsuna the trailblazer and Saji the gentle. 

After Setsuna left for the ELS homeworld, the others continued on. Saji and Louise stayed together. No kids, but Louise slowly improved and Saji stayed by her side the whole time, which is, in it's own way, even more romantic than the house full of children type ending. I might be biased, though. 

When Setsuna comes back, Saji's had one lung transplant but his body rejected it. The doctor's are hoping to grow a compatible one from stem cells but they were too late.

"I was scared before, but I think it will be okay.” When he said this, Saji was lying to Setsuna to make him feel better (he did the same for Louise). He didn't think anything was okay. He was terrified. But he was also glad that Louise was alive, and Setsuna was alive, and he had faith that someday /they/ would be okay.

This was a hard scene to write on an emotional level. ...I'll leave it at that.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Setsuna and Saji: Post-canon, time unspecified.  
Saji is an engineer again, and a distant relative of his last life. He's about 24 or so.

The early part of this section, the transition, took me an entire day to write. It was awful. I eventually had to stop and call 'good enough' on the transition.

Saji's relationship with Graham-of-this-time was mostly for laughs on my part, but I also wanted Setsuna to evaluate what could have been with Saji, to show the knowledge he had of his own soul and the intuition that guides an Innovator. I also wanted him to realize he's still capable of human emotion, after being alone with the ELS for so long, even if that emotion was jealousy. It just didn't flow with the story around it when I got into it more.

The scene outside with the panel was also a hard one to write, emotionally, even though I knew it would end well.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Louise and Feldt and many of the others would have appeared in the past lives as well, or more often, but this fic would be a truly gigantic beast if all those ideas made it in. I had to cut lots of interesting tidbits. Some of the cut ideas are below:  
-Feldt's soul is one of the oldest. The baker that helped Frodi was already her second or third life.  
-Lyle's soul is older than Neil's.  
-The Dylandys are indeed distantly related to Domnall and Nyfain. After 2000 years, a great many people are.  
-Louise was somehow involved in Musau's life. I never decided how, though. By the time I got to this lifetime, I was already approaching the posting date for G00 Week and knew I had to cut things.  
-The length of time between reincarnations is successively smaller on purpose. With more humans on the planet, there needs to be more souls, and older souls get shorter 'rests' between lives.  
-Allelujah, Ian, Mileina, and Billy are all very young souls. Sumeragi is not that much older. Marie and Graham and Shirin are about the same age.  
-Innovades do not start out with souls. Their consciousness develops into something rather like a soul, however. It's enough that someday Anew will be reborn, because I am a sap and want her and Lyle to have a chance at a happy life.

Thank you for reading this far. As a gift, here's a fluffy, sappy ELS!SetsuSaji scene!

\------------------

They lay together in a field of flowers, on some planet Setsuna didn't know the name of. But the air was rich in nitrogen, which was even better than oxygen to them, and Saji's fingers were entwined in his, so nothing else seemed important. The ELS hummed contented in the back of his consciousness.

"Saji," he said, and he wasn't sure if he asked in his mind or aloud, but it didn't matter with them. "I noticed that you always have the same eyes."

"Mmm," Saji agreed. "I did that on purpose."

Setsuna pulled his hand from Saji's and sat up. His arched his eyebrows and his whole consciousness demanded 'Explain,' even though he never said a word.

Saji pulled himself into a sitting position with his legs drawn up, and he rested his arms on his knees. "I wanted to make sure you recognized me," he said. "So from life to life, I made sure I had Thiodric's eyes."

"You were aware enough to do that sort of thing?"

Saji looked at him and nodded. "How do you think I ended up Saji Crossroad twice? That sort of thing doesn't happen by coincidence." He smiled, a gentle smile of older Saji (that he shared with Musau) and not the slightly foolish one of young Saji (that he got from Thiodric and that had marked him through the ages). 

"Saji Crossroad, you have cheated at reincarnation." Setsuna's tone was scolding, and Saji put a hand behind his head and laughed.

"Sorry, sorry."

Setsuna relaxed into the flowers again. Although he didn't mind looking at Saji, the stars above called out to him. One of them was their Sun, and around it their precious Earth where they had lived and loved so many times before. The ELS helpfully told him exactly which one.

"I was always kind of annoyed that you didn't make it easy for me," Saji said next to him. "I made sure I had the same eyes, every time."

"Your eyes are gold now," Setsuna pointed out. "All Innovators eyes are yellow."

He heard Saji move. The other man turned and put an arm on Setsuna's other side, holding his weight as he blocked Setsuna's view of the sky. The shifting gold of his eyes stilled as he blocked his connection to the ELS' and Setsuna's quantum brainwaves.

Once the Innovator gold had stopped, Saji's eyes were the same olive-brown as umber pigment before it was heated, as a particularly boring alder's bark, as a tiger's eye stone around the eye. They were the same eyes as Thiodrik and Domnall and Musau and Jae and Saji Crossroad himself.

"Cheater," Setsuna breathed, but Saji was looking down at him in a way he remembered from when he was Nyfain and Charley. His face filled Setsuna's vision until the world seemed to narrow to just the two of them. Their breath mingled.

The ELS' consciousness whirled, excited, and Setsuna laughed- actually laughed out loud.

"What? What is it?" Saji said, those familiar eyes getting wide.

"The ELS would like to know if you're going to kiss me," Setsuna admitted. Saji groaned and rolled away from him, hiding his face in his hands.

"Everything they've seen us share before, and /that's/ what embarrassed you? Saji Crossroad, you are a wonder."

Setsuna took Saji's hand again and chuckled, and his happiness echoed throughout the stars.


End file.
